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Ryu is the quintessential "basic" character in fighting games with an intuitive array of punches and kicks, and very basic special moves, making him the definitive Jack of All Stats character who's meant for beginners and experts alike. In past games, his simplicity gives most beginners confidence in starting most traditional fighters. His speed and health are also often very average, though as of recent titles and later games in the past, Ryu has seen many changes that make him more powerful as time goes on, and less overshadowed.

Unfortunately, he is a rather predictable character because of being very popular in terms of usage, as many pro-players know much of his tactics due to him being a popular fighting game character vindicated by history, that doesn't mean that he's considered ineffective because of this. Ryu is an extremely balanced character who can still put up a good fight. His assists as of Tatsunoko vs. Capcom can be great for extending combos, especially his Hadouken despite it having an average amount of hitstun. As of Street Fighter IV, most of his abilities have been improved to the point where he's now a solid point-character for nearly every situation, ranging for a decent rushdown with slight mix-up and equipped with simple ways of scoring knockdowns in order to zone/lockdown with his famous projectile, the Hadouken, or punish with any other tool while acting in accordance.

A big strength is his in most recent titles is that most of his combos do very simple and good damage with great results, making him a great character for those who emphasize on bread and butter combos, and can even utilize simple Super/Hyper Cancel combos where most of his simple combos can lead into Hypers for impressive damage. As of the 3D versions of his appearances, Ryu also has his issues of range solved, as he now packs some decent pokes. Also, Ryu's mixup game is average thanks to his Sakotsu Wari command normal.

A minor disadvantage of his is that his midair normals don't normally aim downward, making him a bit bad with air-to-ground jump-ins. His Hadouken also flies straight forward only in midair, making him a bit bad at air-to-ground zoning. Regarding this, his zoning has increased in MVC3 in that he can now fill the screen with more than one projectile, buffing him slightly. Past weaknesses in the past are that more powerful and capable characters greatly overshadowed him and that his more powerful tricks require a lot of exploration to discover. However, Ryu himself provides excellent team synergy for most top-tier characters in most team-based fighters he appears in.

His Hadouken and Shouryuuken (and to the lesser extent the Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku) helped define the basic traits of several if not all beginner-type "Shoto clone" characters, making most have a basic projectile and anti-air specials/attacks. Shoutouclone was coined from Shoutoukan Karate, Ryu's fighting style used in his normals.

In UMvC3, much of Ryu's capabilities are buffed to the point of being a bigger threat; not only is his dash retweaked, his new Hadouken and Shouryuuken attacks are rather wild, and his new Hadou Kakusei attack gives him strong capabilities with his Shin Hadouken and Shin Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku conversions. His normal attacks have gained less damage scaling minimums, and overall Ryu has received nothing but buffs. With all of this, his damage output potential increases vastly, making this version of Ryu the most powerful in most of his appearances so far, barring his Evil Ryu incarnations. Contrary to popular belief, his Hypers are not button mashable.

However, all this power comes at a cost; in Hadou Kakusei, Ryu like with most characters in powered-up states from Super/Hypers cannot build meter in such a state, such when he uses his Shin Hadouken and Shin Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku there is a high chance Ryu would burn too much meter while outputting most of his power, thus limiting his options if he's run dry.

(Note: Some spellings are not in line with the official game version's spelling, and some also use the extra "o" and "u" romanizations while others do not.)